Stressful yet Good

That's about where my life's at right now. Over the summer the YMCA consumed my soul. And now school has taken it's place. Went from 8 hour days outside with screaming children and mostly crappy coworkers to 7 hour days of classes and homework. But, I have to admit, school is much more exciting. I can see my friends on a daily basis, and my time is mostly spent indoors. So that is the first contributor to the "Stressful yet Good" scenario.

The second is Footloose. Since I haven't updated at all during the summer (my bad, I'm sorry), I haven't mentioned that I am now co-managing the Village Square's production of Footloose with my girlfriend. Which is definitely nice. I love being involved in theatre, and this gave me a chance to be involved for some of my summer and the beginning of the school year. And I feel really good about the fact that I'm actually involved in a community theatre project and branching out as opposed to just staying within the bounds of high school. So that's the second contributor to "Stressful yet Good."

So that's all for now. I'll write more at some point soon.

Life Update

Well, I guess no one had any new ideas, so here's a life update:

School's finally over. Or did it really take that long. I don't know. Sometime I felt like it was dragging on forever, and sometimes I felt like it was the first semester. But it's over, for the summer at least, and that makes me happy. For now. By the middle of the summer I might want it back; that all depends on how many of my friends I get to see. And two weeks in it's looking kinda bleak.

For the first two weeks of summer so far, I've been working at the YMCA. In the beginning, it was honestly horrible. I couldn't stop complaining. We got a new insurance company, and a lot of rules have changed. The one that seems to be the biggest to me is that fact that my lunch break was taken away from me. Last year I had an hour for lunch, and now I eat with the kids. I'm not complaining about this because of food, though. I'm complaining because that one hour let me recollect myself and get ready for round two. Working with children for eight hours can be a very stressful thing, and I needed one hour of peace and quiet to recooperate. Well, that hour is gone. That, among other things, made me amazingly mad, almost on the verge of quitting. But now it seems that things may be getting better, and we may be getting our breaks back. So that's good.

My girlfriend is in Cali right now, helping her sister out with newborn twins. I'm a little bummed out by that. Last summer she was gone in California for almost two months, and this year she'll be gone for another 2 weeks. (I know, it's much less. But she's already been gone for one.) Plus, I have to leave the day she comes back for one week to go to a church beach camp. So it'll be a total of four weeks without her. Ugh. I guess I'll just have to get over that, though. Nothing I can do about it.

On a much, much more exciting note, tomorrow is going to be the first of my seven days at Palmetto Boys State. That's going to be a blast. It's going to be some work, and it's going to be tiring, but I'm really looking forward to it. For those of you who don't know, Boys State is a mock government sort of thing, with elected officials, lawyers, judges (and sports teams, but that's unrelated). For more information about it, you can go to their website, palmettoboysstate.com.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have grandparents to call.

Have you tried Hare Krishna?

Catchy title? I think so. I really need to watch that movie. (The Muppet Movie, or some such similar name.) Even I don't fully understand my title, but that's a different subject. It's basically just a tribute to my pathetically allergy-ridden girlfriend (who is a little under the weather at the moment) and her father.

But, in any case, I don't feel like my blog has a sense of direction. It's a seemingly random mass of several posts of several words about my life. With no real coherent theme, no glue in which to bond it together.

And so I figure I'll post a plea for help. Does anyone have any good ideas for a running theme for the Blog of Shawn? Because the Life of Shawn just really isn't working. Not for me at least. If it's working well enough for you, then I'll just continue on and try to post more of it. If that's what my "fan base" really want.

Maybe I'm just not experienced enough in this big game of life to have a theme that isn't my life. I'll think on that. More later. And hopefully there won't be the big long weeks and weeks of a non updated blog page. We'll see.

On another, much more important note, tomorrow is Mother's Day. And I have a mother. And here's her tribute:

Dear Mom,
No matter what you say, I think you're the greatest mom ever. You'd do anything for me, even if it's a huge inconvenience to you. You always make sure I have anything I need. You're always there if I need you. You're just a really great person in general, and an ever better mom. I can talk to you about anything. Anyway, this little blurb was just a really roundabout way to say that I'm glad you're my mom. Really glad. Hope this day (and year) rocks. I love you.
Happy Mother's Day,
Me

Scholarships

Well, here goes my first (mostly) informational blog:

I was scholarship searching on collegeboard.com the other day and stumbled across this group called the Common Knowledge Scholarship Foundation. It's an interesting group that gives out mostly small amounts of scholarship money to students age 13 and up, planning on going to college of course, for something as arbitrary as taking short quizzes. You simply register with the site and give a little information about yourself (nothing you wouldn't give to a place like MySpace; actually less) and it tells you which quizzes you are eligible to take. And when I say quizzes, I'm not talking about subject quizzes like math, science or English, I'm talking about (actual examples) Harry Potter, Movies, and NASCAR. Now, the money's not big (collegeboard.com lists it at $250-$25,000, but the Harry Potter quizzes I'm taking are either worth $50 a piece or $50 altogether; that's all I've taken so far) but it's still money. I'm pretty sure you don't get cast payments, but if you start young enough, it's not a bad way to make a little money to help pay for college.

Either way, if you decide to use CKSF or not, I strongly recommend running searches for scholarships on at least two different college databases (I'm using both collegeboard.com and petersons.com right now myself) because they'll both probably give you some different results. And the money usually won't be huge, but even one $1000 scholarship is going to help. I won't be applying for most of these until this fall or winter, but it helps to start looking now.

So, there it was, the totally informational blog about scholarships. I hope you find this information to your liking (especially if you're my usual reader in the form of a teenage friend at school) because it's helped me.

And A Big One Just Hit

So if anyone knows about any underground tunnels from Lexington, South Carolina that open up in France wherever two people that are dearly missed happen to be, would you let me know. Because a big wave of "I miss two specific people," just hit. Like right now. I'm constantly missing them, but mostly in the back of my mind. But literally about 2 minutes ago a big wave of sadness just kinda rushed over me.

What if I never get to see you guys again?

It's Been A While...

Chinese food in my stomach. Quite amazing.

But more to the point, it has been a while since I've posted. Poor, poor neglected blog that actually did seem to have some viewers. I hope they come back.

One of the reasons I haven't posted in a while is just that I haven't had time, what with stress at school and other things. It's not too bad, now, though. I just have some touch-ups to do on my Senior Project Research Paper, and a little to do on my multi-genre project, but that's about it.

I got nominated for Palmetto Boys State. The official interview for the guys is Friday. Wish me luck, I really want to go.

I think that's about it for now. I'll try to make it a shorter time until my next post than this, but I can't make any promises.

Opening Night

Well, tonight was opening night for my school play, Night Must Fall. It's a British play written and set in the 1930's, so most people don't recognize it either. Don't feel bad if you don't. Anyway, I was excited because it was my first major acting role in a play that we've done at school. I've done small acting stuff once, been Asst. Stage Manager once, and Head of Lights another, but never a real acting part. I only miffed up a couple of things in my final scene, and I got way more laughs than I expected; plus a lot of compliments afterwards. We've got one more show, and that's tomorrow night @ 7, so I'm still pretty pumped about that, too. We've just got a great cast and everybody did really well. But, anyway, thought I'd let you know before I went to bed, whoever "you" may be.

Night. (Must Fall)